This study examined three aspects of secondary STEM schools: (1) the mission and standards of AdvancED, the international school accrediting agency that STEM certified all of the Schools in this study; (2) the mission statements of 15 secondary STEM Schools; and (3) the published program materials from websites, handbooks, brochures, and news stories that provided a descriptive overview of the STEM Schools. The study purported to determine to what extent those aspects recommended and supported the use of instructional pedagogy and student learning experiences to facilitate student engagement with STEM. The study examined published physical documents of each of the three aspects of STEM Schools using computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS). The research design employed a summative quantitative content analysis. The AdvancED mission and standards as well as the STEM Schools mission statements and program materials were available online at their various websites. The investigation for the study used the core competencies and instructional design components of the Global STEM Alliance STEM Education Framework. The core competencies included critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, communication, collaboration, data literacy and digital literacy and computer science. The instructional design components included research based pedagogy, STEM content integration, real-world application, project or problem-based learning, assessment and technology integration. These components provided the framework for the coding used in the CAQDAS examination.The analysis revealed that STEM Schools were aligning student learning experiences and instructional pedagogy with national priorities for STEM education, including recruiting students from underrepresented groups, providing rigorous, inquiry-based learning experiences and partnering with business, industry, and communities to provide holistic and authentic STEM learning. Only 20% of the STEM Schools included mentions of content knowledge, competency skills or thinking strategies in their mission statements, but all schools mentioned content knowledge and competency skills in their program materials.